![]() It was followed by The Marriage of the Sea, a New York Times Notable Book of 2003. She also worked as a freelance editor and illustrator before attending Columbia University to study creative writing.Īlison's first novel, The Love-Artist, was published in 2001 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and has been translated into seven languages. Before writing fiction, she worked as an administrator for the National Endowment for the Humanities, as a production artist for the Washington City Paper, as an editor for the Miami New Times, and as a proposal and speech writer for Tulane University. ![]() in classics from Princeton University in 1983. She attended public schools in Washington, D.C., and then earned a B.A. If you, too, are an avid reader and active or potential writer, pick this book up.Jane Alison (born 1961) is an Australian author.īorn in Canberra in 1961, Alison spent two years in Australia as a small child, growing up mainly in the United States as a child of diplomatic parents. I expect to think about Alison’s points often as I read fiction in the future, and also as I contemplate writing my own someday. They both had patterns to them that Alison described especially Girl, Woman, Other, which certainly does not move linearly forward in time or follow the experiences of one or a few central characters. Immediately after reading this book, I read two great examples of Alison’s points: Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo. The things that writers can do is astounding to me. I was also joyfully fascinated by literary examples with alternative shapes that existed alongside the “typical” plot structure rather than instead of it. But still, they were wonderfully demonstrative and carefully explained. She picked great examples, although I personally wish that I had read at least a few of them before reading this book I think that would have made her points hit home even more. Then she goes through each of the shapes she’s observed one by one, citing examples that already exist in published works. And that those alternatives often follow shapes commonly found throughout the universe, like fractals, waves, and spirals. Alison starts by proposing that there are a ton of alternatives to the typical exposition / rising action / climax / denouement structure that dominates teachings about writing today. This is a craft book, aka a book about writing (specifically fiction, in this case). I’m glad I finally did! This is a quick little book that made me think more deeply about stories’ plots, and it’s going to help me continue to read more deeply in the future. I’ve been meaning to read Meander, Spiral, Explode since I got it from Catapult back in March of 2019. It will appeal to serious readers and writers alike. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let’s leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions. ![]() Other writers of nonlinear prose considered in her “museum of specimens” include Nicholson Baker, Anne Carson, Marguerite Duras, Jamaica Kincaid, Clarice Lispector, Gabriel García Márquez, Susan Minot, David Mitchell, Caryl Phillips, and Mary Robison. ![]() Sebald’s The Emigrants was the first novel to show Alison how forward momentum can be created by way of pattern, rather than the traditional arc ― or, in nature, wave. But: something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculo-sexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. As Jane Alison writes in the introduction to her insightful and appealing book about the craft of writing: “For centuries there’s been one path through fiction we’re most likely to travel ― one we’re actually told to follow―and that’s the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides.
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